Photograph Source: Federal Reserve – Public Domain

A few weeks back, Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency Director (FHFA) and the billionaire heir to a housing construction firm, claimed to have found evidence that Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook had committed mortgage fraud. Donald Trump immediately tried to fire Cook from her position at the Fed, with the intention of getting another seat on the Fed’s seven-person board.

This attempted firing raised several serious questions. Most immediately, whether the FHFA Director is supposed to be rifling through the mortgage documents of Trump’s political opponents.

Previously, Pulte had claimed to have found evidence that California Senator Adam Schiff had committed mortgage fraud. Schiff had led the first impeachment case against Trump in 2019, as a member of the House. Pulte also claimed to have found evidence of mortgage fraud by Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, who had gotten a civil conviction against Trump for, among other things, lying on loan forms.

But it also raised questions about Trump’s power as president. While the Republican Supreme Court claimed to find wording in the Constitution that allowed the president to freely fire members of ostensibly independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, which overseas antitrust law, and the National Labor Relations Board, which monitors labor law violations, it also apparently found wording that........

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